A stranger at the grocery store grabbed me and yelled, “Those are my kidnapped kids you’re raising!”

“The house was empty. We did find some concerning items, though.”

She pulled out her phone and showed me photos. Our bedroom looked normal, except the closet was half empty.

Vanessa’s side of the bathroom counter was cleared out. Her laptop was gone from the desk in our home office.

“It looks like she left in a hurry,” Detective Enuan said, watching my reaction.

“Probably right after you left for the grocery store this morning. Did she seem off lately—nervous or distracted?”

I thought back to the past few weeks. Vanessa had been quieter than usual, spending more time on her phone.

She’d mentioned wanting to take the girls on a trip soon, just the three of them. I thought she was stressed about work.

Now I was realizing she might have been planning to run.

“We found something else,” Detective Naguan said, pulling out an evidence bag.

Inside was a newspaper clipping from three years ago. The headline read, “Two sisters missing from lake house, presumed drowned.”

The article was yellow with age and had been folded and unfolded many times.

“This was hidden in a box in your garage,” Detective Ninguan explained,

“Under some old tax documents.”

My throat closed up. Vanessa had kept a newspaper article about missing children hidden in our house.

Children who looked exactly like our daughters. Children who disappeared right around the time Vanessa had supposedly given birth to Olivia.

“I need to see my daughters,” I said, my voice coming out rough.

“Where are they right now?”

A Childhood Built on Lies

Detective Nuan’s expression softened slightly.

“They’re with a child welfare specialist in a family room. They’re safe and being cared for, but they weren’t asking for me anymore, I thought.”

They were probably terrified and confused, wondering why strangers had taken them away from their dad.

“Elizabeth Carver is here too,” Detective Nuan continued.

“She’s in another room with a social worker. She’s been very cooperative and willing to do DNA testing immediately.”

DNA testing that would prove everything one way or another. If these girls were really Elizabeth’s missing daughters, the tests would show it.

If they were really Vanessa’s biological children like I’d believed for years, that would show too.

“How long for results?” I asked.

“Expedited testing can give us preliminary results in 48 hours,” Detective Nuan said.

“Full confirmation takes about a week.”

Two days of not knowing. Two days of my daughters being kept away from me while we waited for science to prove I wasn’t a kidnapper.

Another detective came to the door and called Detective Nuan out. I sat alone in the interview room, staring at the photos of those missing girls, trying to find differences between them and my daughters.

The hair color was the same. The facial features were similar, but lots of kids looked similar at that age, right?

This didn’t prove anything. When Detective Nuan came back, she had a laptop.

“We pulled Vanessa’s social media accounts,” she said, turning the screen toward me.

“Look at this.”

The account showed Vanessa’s photos going back six years. I scrolled through pictures of her smiling at the camera, photos of food, vacation shots, but there were no pictures of her pregnant.

None of the girls as newborns. The earliest photos of Mia and Olivia showed them as toddlers around the same age as they were when Elizabeth Carver reported them missing.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” I said, but my voice shook.

“Vanessa was private about her pregnancy. She didn’t like posting personal stuff online.”

Detective Nuan pulled up another screen.

“We also checked birth records. There’s no hospital record of Vanessa giving birth to either child.”

The room went cold.

“What?” I managed to say.

“Home births?”

“According to the birth certificates you filed during the adoption, both girls were born at home with a midwife present,” Detective Ninguan said.

“We’re trying to track down this midwife now, but the phone number listed is disconnected, and the address doesn’t exist.”

Everything I thought I knew about my family was crumbling. Vanessa had lied about the births.

She’d lied about the midwife. She’d kept a newspaper article about missing children hidden in our house, and now she’d disappeared the moment someone confronted me.

“I need to talk to her,” I said desperately.

“There has to be an explanation.”

Detective Nuan’s expression was sympathetic but firm.

“We have officers looking for her now. In the meantime, we need your full cooperation with the investigation.”

They took my DNA sample right there, swabbing the inside of my cheek with a long cotton stick. Then they took me to a different room where I could see Mia and Olivia through a window.

Both girls were sitting at a small table with coloring books. A woman in casual clothes sat with them, talking softly.

Olivia was still crying, her face splotchy and red. Mia was clutching her purple jacket and staring at the door like she was waiting for me to come get her.

“Can I go in?” I asked.

Detective Nuan shook her head.

“Not until we have more clarity on the situation. If these children are kidnapping victims, we need to be very careful about their emotional state and memories.”

“If”—that word hung in the air like poison. My daughters were being treated as evidence in a crime.

Children I’d raised and loved and tucked into bed every night for years were suddenly not mine to comfort. In another room down the hall, I could see Elizabeth Carver through a different window.

She was sitting with a tissue box, talking to someone I couldn’t see. Her hands moved frantically as she spoke.

And even from this distance, I could see her desperation.